5 Scottish Startups To Watch This Year

With companies like Skyscanner and FanDuel taking the world by storm and Edinburgh being crowned the ‘2016 Entrepreneurial City of The Year’, Scotland is one to watch out for. Here we highlight the best Scottish startup companies to keep a close eye on in 2017.

pureLiFi

pureLiFi are the leading experts in Visible Light Communications technology. Formed in 2012, the company is an extension of Edinburgh University’s D-Light project that begun in 2008. ‘Li-Fi’, a term coined by company CSO and co-founder Professor Harald Haas, creates a whole new realm of connectivity through light, specifically LED. In a nutshell, the technology enables the LED light source to transmit data wirelessly at super high speeds whether through a laptop or mobile device or such like, revolutionising the data and bandwidth worlds. The first demonstration of Li-Fi occurred in 2011 by Professor Haas at a TED Global.

Machines With Vision

Cloudgine

In an age where virtual reality is coming in hot, Cloudgine could not be more pertinent. This trailblazing team has created a network of intense compute power for gaming and VR. Drawing upon cloud technology, game developers can enter into uncharted frontiers. The supersonic graphics and higher performing software are destined to evolve the gaming world.

Mallzee

E-commerce made easy, Mallzee is a free fashion app offering a smoother and swifter online purchasing process. Coined as the fashion version of Tinder, the app is constantly evolving and boasts over 200 top fashion brands and one million plus users. Malzee is considered the best non-retailer shopping app in the UK and has won 50 plus awards, including nonstop praise as Apple’s Best New App.

sensewhere

Sensewhere specialises in a highly advanced patented indoor positioning technology smart enough to break the barriers of GPS blackspots — think malls, hospitals, airports etc. Through using crowdsourcing to craft a constantly updating global location database, this trailblazing software can pave new ways for mega mapping indoor communities. 2009 welcomed leading tech experts to form the company and build upon the sensewhere seed, which was first planted via revolutionary technology developed by great minds at the University of Edinburgh.

Since you are here, we would like to share our vision for the future of travel - and the direction Culture Trip is moving in.

Culture Trip launched in 2011 with a simple yet passionate mission: to inspire people to go beyond their boundaries and experience what makes a place, its people and its culture special and meaningful — and this is still in our DNA today. We are proud that, for more than a decade, millions like you have trusted our award-winning recommendations by people who deeply understand what makes certain places and communities so special.

Increasingly we believe the world needs more meaningful, real-life connections between curious travellers keen to explore the world in a more responsible way. That is why we have intensively curated a collection of premium small-group trips as an invitation to meet and connect with new, like-minded people for once-in-a-lifetime experiences in three categories: Culture Trips, Rail Trips and Private Trips. Our Trips are suitable for both solo travelers, couples and friends who want to explore the world together.

Culture Trips are deeply immersive 5 to 16 days itineraries, that combine authentic local experiences, exciting activities and 4-5* accommodation to look forward to at the end of each day. Our Rail Trips are our most planet-friendly itineraries that invite you to take the scenic route, relax whilst getting under the skin of a destination. Our Private Trips are fully tailored itineraries, curated by our Travel Experts specifically for you, your friends or your family.

We know that many of you worry about the environmental impact of travel and are looking for ways of expanding horizons in ways that do minimal harm - and may even bring benefits. We are committed to go as far as possible in curating our trips with care for the planet. That is why all of our trips are flightless in destination, fully carbon offset - and we have ambitious plans to be net zero in the very near future.